FAKKU Books: Translation Insight
3
YQII
FAKKU Translator
In this topic I'm going to share stories about the translation process of books and other things that we're working on at FAKKU. These posts will vary between tidbits of a few paragraphs and in-dept discussions spanning multiple screens—an example of the latter would the discussion on honorifics I did early on. They can be about broad concepts or a specific speech bubble in a book. Basically, whenever I come across something interesting while translating, I will try to make a post here.
Feel free to discuss or ask questions about the subjects I'm covering, but in order to avoid this getting cluttered, please don't suggest future topics here.
If there's a translation topic you would like to know more about, or want to ask me something in general, you can contact me through PM, twitter, or ask.fm.
List of Topics
Feel free to discuss or ask questions about the subjects I'm covering, but in order to avoid this getting cluttered, please don't suggest future topics here.
If there's a translation topic you would like to know more about, or want to ask me something in general, you can contact me through PM, twitter, or ask.fm.
List of Topics
3
YQII
FAKKU Translator
Book Titles in General
The localization of a title is a topic deserving an entry of its own, so before we go into one specific book, I will a few words about book titles in general, especially the ones provided on the jacket of the book.
Many of these books actually already have an English "title" on the Jacket in the original version. If you want an example of this, you can check out Renai Sample, which has the English sentence "She is crazy about sweet love..." underneath the Japanese title. However, while you can often find some sort of relation between the two—Renai meaning "(intense) love" and the English title talking about "sweet love"—the English "title" is usually more of a supplement to the actual title rather than a proper translation. This has led us to refer to them as subtitles when talking amongst ourselves, and I will start doing that from hereon to distinguish between the title (Renai Sample) and the subtitle (She is crazy about sweet love...).
When it comes time to decide how to localize a title, some are extremely easy, such as Porno Switch. The original title is just those exact words written in Japanese, and the subtitle is simply "porno switch." Besides already having what's essentially an English title, something else that's fairly easy to localize are books that uses a full sentence as their title, since you have a lot more context to work with. The title for Welcome to Tokoharu Apartments says precisely that in Japanese, and we get some reassurance from the subtitle "Welcome to the apartment of everlasting spring... come to me." We're provided with the desired structure from the subtitle, and all we have to do is get rid of the extra fluff ("… come to me") and change it to "Tokoharu Apartments"— "Tokoharu" means "everlasting spring," but it makes more sense to not translate an apartment complex named after its owner.
A decent number of titles require you to think and possible even do some research before you settle on a translation. This was the case for Alluring Woman, but that's a separate topic that I will cover in the future. For now, I think this is enough to move on to an actual example of a title localization.
The localization of a title is a topic deserving an entry of its own, so before we go into one specific book, I will a few words about book titles in general, especially the ones provided on the jacket of the book.
Many of these books actually already have an English "title" on the Jacket in the original version. If you want an example of this, you can check out Renai Sample, which has the English sentence "She is crazy about sweet love..." underneath the Japanese title. However, while you can often find some sort of relation between the two—Renai meaning "(intense) love" and the English title talking about "sweet love"—the English "title" is usually more of a supplement to the actual title rather than a proper translation. This has led us to refer to them as subtitles when talking amongst ourselves, and I will start doing that from hereon to distinguish between the title (Renai Sample) and the subtitle (She is crazy about sweet love...).
When it comes time to decide how to localize a title, some are extremely easy, such as Porno Switch. The original title is just those exact words written in Japanese, and the subtitle is simply "porno switch." Besides already having what's essentially an English title, something else that's fairly easy to localize are books that uses a full sentence as their title, since you have a lot more context to work with. The title for Welcome to Tokoharu Apartments says precisely that in Japanese, and we get some reassurance from the subtitle "Welcome to the apartment of everlasting spring... come to me." We're provided with the desired structure from the subtitle, and all we have to do is get rid of the extra fluff ("… come to me") and change it to "Tokoharu Apartments"— "Tokoharu" means "everlasting spring," but it makes more sense to not translate an apartment complex named after its owner.
A decent number of titles require you to think and possible even do some research before you settle on a translation. This was the case for Alluring Woman, but that's a separate topic that I will cover in the future. For now, I think this is enough to move on to an actual example of a title localization.
8
YQII
FAKKU Translator
[NaPaTa] Love-Ridden: The Title
Less than two days from now, we will release chapter one of our first NaPaTa book, so it felt appropriate to start this series off by discussing its title: Love-Ridden.
The original title is "Suki-darake" with the subtitle "Lovely Lover's Love."
If we're to break the title down, we first have suki, meaning love—in case you're wondering what the difference is between this and renai, you can think of this as more of a "like" and the other as "passion." The second word is darake, which is a noun suffix with the following definition: (1) implying (negatively) that something is full of (e.g. mistakes); (2) covered all over (e.g. with blood).
Allow me to sidetrack a bit for two paragraphs. While I don't think I have ever encountered this phrase being used with suki (好ã) meaning love, I have seen it with a different suki (éš™), which means "gap; opportunity; opening." It is fairly common to see this used in an action context, when one character finds an opening in an opponent's seemingly impenetrable defense, and proceeds to strike against it, typically settling the fight by doing so. This is also used figuratively, where if you find a moment where your love-interest leaves her/himself vulnerable, you can use that opportunity to make a (romantic) move on them. Suki-darake in this case would mean that someone is completely open and have practically no defense at all against attackers.
This is most likely an intentional play on words in the title—something that's extremely common in book and chapter titles—where it can be interpret as the characters being unable to fight back and easily succumbing to the onslaught of love. However, even if I think this was part of the reason this title was chosen, the fact that they use kanji (symbols that holds a certain meaning) instead of kana (symbols that are just syllables) means you don't have to guess if it's supposed to be suki as in 好ã or éš™—we know it's "love." Even if this wasn't the case, we can make this assumption with a fair bit of certainty thanks to the subtitle being "Lovely Lover's Love."
Now let's return to translating the actual title. "Love" seems like an obvious choice to go with, especially given the subtitle. The darake suffix basically means "a lot of something," so some of the early ideas were things like "Lotsa Love" and "A Bunch of Love." However, there's one aspect we're forgetting about the Japanese term. Let's take a second look at the first definition of the word: "implying (negatively) that something is full of (e.g. mistakes)."
Darake has a negative connotation to it. Indeed, this was also the case when used with the other meaning of suki; being filled with openings is not a good thing, since it means you have a lousy defense are are wide open to attack from many directions. Another common combination that comes to mind is gomi-darake, with gomi meaning trash, which is often used to describe something like a messy room, similar to how "pigsty" would be used in English. This would be closer to the second meaning (covered all over (e.g. with blood)), but as you can see, it's still something negative. Other common words that goes with darake are scars, mistakes, lies, debt, and in the case of hentai, semen. Needless to say, being darake with something is generally something you do not want to be.
This leaves us with a positive word (love) combined with a negative word (full of). Albeit catchy, it didn't feel right to go with something like "Lotsa Love" anymore. I don't remember who came up with it, but one way or another, "ridden" popped up in our heads. Ridden has the following definition: 1: harassed, oppressed, or obsessed by —usually used in combination 2: excessively full of or supplied with —usually used in combination
As you can tell, they're both very similar; they're both suffixes—granted this is more of a fun coincident that anything else—that are used in combination with other words to describe something being full of that word, both with almost exclusively negative connotations. "Debt" even pops up as a common word used in example sentences when you look up both the Japanese and English term.
This is fairly representative of how we (typically Mike and I) come up with many of the book titles; you do a lot of pondering and look up the words in dictionaries and thesauruses to find the most appropriate one, and then you eventually stumble across something that just fits perfectly.
I hope you enjoyed this first—or second or third, depending on how you wanna look at it—insight in the translation process here at FAKKU. If nothing else, you killed some time while waiting for the book to come out. The localization of book or chapter titles is definitely a topic I will return to eventually, but if you have any other suggestions for future topics, please contact me through PM, twitter, or ask.fm.
Less than two days from now, we will release chapter one of our first NaPaTa book, so it felt appropriate to start this series off by discussing its title: Love-Ridden.
The original title is "Suki-darake" with the subtitle "Lovely Lover's Love."
If we're to break the title down, we first have suki, meaning love—in case you're wondering what the difference is between this and renai, you can think of this as more of a "like" and the other as "passion." The second word is darake, which is a noun suffix with the following definition: (1) implying (negatively) that something is full of (e.g. mistakes); (2) covered all over (e.g. with blood).
Allow me to sidetrack a bit for two paragraphs. While I don't think I have ever encountered this phrase being used with suki (好ã) meaning love, I have seen it with a different suki (éš™), which means "gap; opportunity; opening." It is fairly common to see this used in an action context, when one character finds an opening in an opponent's seemingly impenetrable defense, and proceeds to strike against it, typically settling the fight by doing so. This is also used figuratively, where if you find a moment where your love-interest leaves her/himself vulnerable, you can use that opportunity to make a (romantic) move on them. Suki-darake in this case would mean that someone is completely open and have practically no defense at all against attackers.
This is most likely an intentional play on words in the title—something that's extremely common in book and chapter titles—where it can be interpret as the characters being unable to fight back and easily succumbing to the onslaught of love. However, even if I think this was part of the reason this title was chosen, the fact that they use kanji (symbols that holds a certain meaning) instead of kana (symbols that are just syllables) means you don't have to guess if it's supposed to be suki as in 好ã or éš™—we know it's "love." Even if this wasn't the case, we can make this assumption with a fair bit of certainty thanks to the subtitle being "Lovely Lover's Love."
Now let's return to translating the actual title. "Love" seems like an obvious choice to go with, especially given the subtitle. The darake suffix basically means "a lot of something," so some of the early ideas were things like "Lotsa Love" and "A Bunch of Love." However, there's one aspect we're forgetting about the Japanese term. Let's take a second look at the first definition of the word: "implying (negatively) that something is full of (e.g. mistakes)."
Darake has a negative connotation to it. Indeed, this was also the case when used with the other meaning of suki; being filled with openings is not a good thing, since it means you have a lousy defense are are wide open to attack from many directions. Another common combination that comes to mind is gomi-darake, with gomi meaning trash, which is often used to describe something like a messy room, similar to how "pigsty" would be used in English. This would be closer to the second meaning (covered all over (e.g. with blood)), but as you can see, it's still something negative. Other common words that goes with darake are scars, mistakes, lies, debt, and in the case of hentai, semen. Needless to say, being darake with something is generally something you do not want to be.
This leaves us with a positive word (love) combined with a negative word (full of). Albeit catchy, it didn't feel right to go with something like "Lotsa Love" anymore. I don't remember who came up with it, but one way or another, "ridden" popped up in our heads. Ridden has the following definition: 1: harassed, oppressed, or obsessed by —usually used in combination 2: excessively full of or supplied with —usually used in combination
As you can tell, they're both very similar; they're both suffixes—granted this is more of a fun coincident that anything else—that are used in combination with other words to describe something being full of that word, both with almost exclusively negative connotations. "Debt" even pops up as a common word used in example sentences when you look up both the Japanese and English term.
This is fairly representative of how we (typically Mike and I) come up with many of the book titles; you do a lot of pondering and look up the words in dictionaries and thesauruses to find the most appropriate one, and then you eventually stumble across something that just fits perfectly.
I hope you enjoyed this first—or second or third, depending on how you wanna look at it—insight in the translation process here at FAKKU. If nothing else, you killed some time while waiting for the book to come out. The localization of book or chapter titles is definitely a topic I will return to eventually, but if you have any other suggestions for future topics, please contact me through PM, twitter, or ask.fm.